What You Need To Know about the Copperwood Mine
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE COPPERWOOD MINE

COPPERWOOD MINE Junior Canadian mining company Highland Copper is proposing a 323 acre metalic sulfide mine in Michigain’s Porcupine Mountains. The mine facility will include explosive plants, sewage lagoons and exhaust systems. This mine threatens all life in the Lake Superior bio reigon and is proposed to be built 100ft from lake superior. There has never been a metallic sulfide mine this close to Lake Superior. Legend ] Proosad exporaton e I copperwood permitied doposit [ Hianhland minerai rights B [ [ —— [ Porcupine Wountains Stato Park | Ottawa National Forest —— Roads —— CNRail River
WHAT IS METALLIC SULFIDE MINING? "Metalic sulfide mining" is the name for mining that happens in an ore body that is rich in sulfur. The "ore body" is the rock that contains a specific desired metal- in this case copper. In order to extract the copper, all of the other minerals and compounds that occur naturally alongside in the rock must be seperated, including heavy metals like lead and mercury. The "tailings” refer to the liquid mixture that is left over after this seperation occurs. When the ore bodly is rich in sulfur, all of that sulfur ends up in the tailings. The sulfur is contained and isolated in the rock, but when it is seperated and pumped into holding ponds, it meets large amounts of water and oxygen, which initiates a chemical process turning it into sulfuric acid - a.k.a battery acid. This is why mine tailings from metalic sulfide mines are so toxic, because they are basically full of battery acid! There has never been a metallic sulfide mine which did not contaminate local water. Tailings are almost always held near the mine, in lined ponds behind a dam, but these dams have a track record of failing consistently around the world, resulting in ecological devestation, like the Brumhadino disaster in Brazil in 2019, or the Mount Polley disaster in Canada in 2014. The Copperwood Mine would erect a tailings disposal facility holding 50+ million tons of heavy-metal laden waste rock on topography sloping towards Lake Superior. Even if the tailings dam holds, acid mine drainage is a certainty: the toxic tailings ALWAYS find their way into the local environment over time.
WHAT IS AT STAKE? This mine is proposed in 1842 Treaty Territory and no assesments of its impact on the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg to fish Lake Superior have been conducted. Lake Superior represents a full 10% of the world’s surface freshwater. Not only does the lake provide fresh water for humans and boundless wildlife, but it is also the beating heart of our rural economies built around tourism, fisheries, and recreation. The 35,000 acres in Porcupine Mountains State Park represent the largest tract of mixed old growth remaining in the Midwest. Worldwide, 98% of old growth forests have been clear-cut. These ecosystems represent the worlds greatest strongholds of biodiversity, as well as some of our best carbon sinks. Imagine the water that those forests depend on being inundated with sulfuric acid. States around the great lakes have issued advisories in recent decades to citizens who eat fish that are caught in the lakes. For Lake Superior Whitefish, that limit is currently one fish a month for Wisconsin and Michlijgan residents. This advisory is based on the amount of mercury found’in Lake Superior Whitefish, mercury that originally was trapped in the rocks of the Upper Peninsula, se[aerated during copper mining operations, and stored in a chemical slurry in tailinfis ponds close to mine sites. Inevtiably, these tailings ponds fail, and the chemicals go where all things flow: into the lake. Minnesota The red *| and orange in the UP showing a high amount of mercury due to mining Hg (g L1) Inu 14 I LG Merer Troe [ coces Ty 10 Great Lakes. b oy g biares Copperwood Mine on 1842 Treaty Territory
WHAT ARE THEY CURRENTLY DOING AT THE COPPERWOOD MINE SITE? Highland Copper claims they have all key permits required to proceed. But in Michigan, mining permits are “Issued, but not Effective” until financial assurances and bonding have been secured. With this Michi%an EGLE "incremental permitting,” this means the forest that Highland Cooper is destroying and the creeks they plan to permanently re-align as part of their wetlands permit may be sacrificed for nothing if Highland Copper fails to meet the remaining requirements. Highland Cooper is actively racing to clear cut hundreds of acres and destroy wetlands before their permits expire. As of this past week, there were local logging trucks seen hauling chopped trees out of their construction area for the mine. — — Actual Photos taken at the Copperwood Proposed Mine Site Last Summer
WHO IS HIGHLAND COPPER? Highland Copper is in their own words a "junior mining company". The Copperwood mine would be this company’s first mine. While they may be a new company, they already have a record of working illegally without permits and damaging the ecosystem as shown in a report by Steve Casey, U.P. district coordinator for the DEQ’s Water Resources Division in Marquette "the mining company continued test drilling operations during spring snowmelt, in and around wetlands, without first obtaining the necessary wetlands or soil erosion and sediment contro permits. The resulting work damaged wetlands and resulted in a discharge of muddied water from the site." THERE ARE NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET The company estimates they will provide 300 construction jobs to build the mine, and 380 jobs for the 10 years it operates. The mine will negatively impact the local tourism economy, forcing the closure of a nearby campground. This project also poses an existential threat to the fisheries of Lake Superior- and the businesses and communities that rely on being able to eat the fish. You may hear that this project will bolster the local economy, but past mines of this type tell a different story. Harvard Economics Professor James Stock, advisor to President Obama is quoted saying: "In 89% of cases copper mining ends up being a negative for jobs and a negative for incomes."3 We are trading 10 years of jobs for 300 people in exchange for ecological devastation for future generations.
A GOOD USE FOR $50 MILLION FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN? You may hear that copper is needed for electrical vehicles to combat climate change and it is critical that we mine it for "the green revolution’- But copper is not scarce. It is 100% recyclable, and an estimated 88% of copper still remains in the ground. In fact, the United States exports nearly ten times as much copper as it importsl and is the #1 exporter of scrap copper in the world. And so its understandable why, despite extreme pressure from the industry, copper was just recently denied an upgrade of status to "critical mineral"2 by the U.S. Geological Society. On March 26th of 2024, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) accounced that they would award a $50,000,000 construction subsidy to Highland Copper for the Copperwood project. This is abnormal for the MEDC, an organization that was set up to fund clean-up projects on past industrial sites to prepare them for development, not support the incursion of extractive industry onto pristine natural lands. Furthermore, the economic analysis released by MEDC does not address mining’s negative impacts to tourism or natural resources that are likely to be felt for many generations after the copper is long gone; the current expected lifespan of the Copperwood Mine is just 11 years. In May of 2024, Minnesota signed into law a bill that will establish a Critical Materials Recovery Advisory Task Force in the state to help bring recycling infrastructure and jobs to Minnesota, where hundreds of thousands of tons of "critial minerals" are thrown away every year. Why risk poisoning the worlds largest body of fresh water to pull copper out of the earth, when we can build systems to recycle it out of the waste stream, creating jobs that are more sustainable that mining ever could be? How far could $50 million dollars go towards establishing a circular economy of copper in Michigan? Or towards protecting and stewarding wetlands- the same ones that Highland Copper is destroying- which serve as our regions best natural carbon-sinks?
WE ARE JUST MESSENGERS! NOW THAT YOU’VE GOT THE MESSAGE, WHAT WILL YOU DO? Highland Copper is an inexperienced foreign company who will extract Michigan’s copper, ship it out of country, board up shop in 10.7 years, and leave a 30+ million ton pile of toxic waste behind, forever, at the juncture of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness and the North Country Trail, on topography sloping towards Lake Superior. Not many people know about this mine and having conversations and building awareness within our communities is crucial for these local struggles to gain support. If you’re interested in fighting against this disastrous project you can reach out to local groups who are taking on this fight against the mine or just get a group of friends together and go scouting, door to dooring and enage in protests and direct actions. Organize your own events or demonstrations to further teach about the harms of this mine and other local issues like the Line 5 pipeline. The $50 million handout of Michigan taxpayer revenue to Highland Copper should never have been approved. The grant has been approved by the Michigan Strategic Fund, but it now must pass the additional steps of being approved by both the Michigan House and Senate Appropriations Committees. THE NEXT MEETING IS ON THURSDAY, JUNE 6TH. Contact them TODAY and urge a rejection of this gross misuse of taxpayer dollars! For a full list of all the members of both committees, go to protecttheporkies.com/take-action LOCAL GROUPS: Protect the Porkies: Protecttheporkies.com Mining Action: Savethewildup.org Gichigami Guardians: gichigami_guardians (Instagram)

SOURCES 1. https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-copper/ reporter/usa 2. www.eenews.net/articles/usgs-rejects-push-to-make-copper-a- critical-mineral/ 3. https://www .karell.com/article/news/politics/economist-sees- net-job-loss-from-bwca-mine/89-b93d2be4-7d42-4afa- aBac-378161088ef8
TURNING THIS...

WHAT YOU
NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT THE
COPPERWOOD
MINE

COPPERWOOD MINE

Junior Canadian mining company
Highland Copper is proposing a 323
acre metalic sulfide mine in
Michigain's Porcupine Mountains. The
mine facility will include explosive
plants, sewage lagoons and exhaust
systems. This mine threatens all life
in the Lake Superior bio reigon and is
proposed to be built 100ft from lake
superior. There has never been a
metallic sulfide mine this close to
Lake Superior.

Legend

] Proosad exporaton e
I copperwood permitied doposit
[ Hianhland minerai rights
B [ [ ——
[ Porcupine Wountains Stato Park

| Ottawa National Forest
—— Roads

—— CNRail

River

WHAT IS METALLIC SULFIDE MINING?

"Metalic sulfide mining" is the name for mining that happens in
an ore body that is rich in sulfur.

The "ore body" is the rock that contains a specific desired
metal- in this case copper. In order to extract the copper, all
of the other minerals and compounds that occur naturally
alongside in the rock must be seperated, including heavy
metals like lead and mercury.

The "tailings” refer to the liquid mixture that is left over after
this seperation occurs. When the ore bodly is rich in sulfur, all
of that sulfur ends up in the tailings. The sulfur is contained
and isolated in the rock, but when it is seperated and pumped
into holding ponds, it meets large amounts of water and
oxygen, which initiates a chemical process turning it into
sulfuric acid - a.k.a battery acid. This is why mine tailings from
metalic sulfide mines are so toxic, because they are basically
full of battery acid!

There has never been a metallic sulfide mine which did not
contaminate local water. Tailings are almost always held near
the mine, in lined ponds behind a dam, but these dams have a
track record of failing consistently around the world, resulting
in ecological devestation, like the Brumhadino disaster in
Brazil in 2019, or the Mount Polley disaster in Canada in 2014.
The Copperwood Mine would erect a tailings disposal facility
holding 50+ million tons of heavy-metal laden waste rock on
topography sloping towards Lake Superior. Even if the tailings
dam holds, acid mine drainage is a certainty: the toxic tailings
ALWAYS find their way into the local environment over time.
WHAT IS AT STAKE?

This mine is proposed in 1842 Treaty Territory and no assesments of its
impact on the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg to fish Lake Superior have
been conducted.

Lake Superior represents a full 10% of the world's surface freshwater. Not
only does the lake provide fresh water for humans and boundless wildlife,
but it is also the beating heart of our rural economies built around
tourism, fisheries, and recreation.

The 35,000 acres in Porcupine Mountains State Park represent the
largest tract of mixed old growth remaining in the Midwest. Worldwide,
98% of old growth forests have been clear-cut. These ecosystems
represent the worlds greatest strongholds of biodiversity, as well as some
of our best carbon sinks. Imagine the water that those forests depend on
being inundated with sulfuric acid.

States around the great lakes have issued advisories in recent decades to
citizens who eat fish that are caught in the lakes. For Lake Superior
Whitefish, that limit is currently one fish a month for Wisconsin and
Michlijgan residents. This advisory is based on the amount of mercury
found'in Lake Superior Whitefish, mercury that originally was trapped in
the rocks of the Upper Peninsula, se[aerated during copper mining
operations, and stored in a chemical slurry in tailinfis ponds close to mine
sites. Inevtiably, these tailings ponds fail, and the chemicals go where all
things flow: into the lake.

Minnesota

The red
*| and orange
in the UP
showing a
high
amount of
mercury
due to
mining

Hg (g L1)

Inu
14

I LG Merer Troe

[ coces Ty

10 Great Lakes.
b oy g biares

Copperwood Mine on 1842 Treaty Territory
WHAT ARE THEY CURRENTLY DOING AT
THE COPPERWOOD MINE SITE?

Highland Copper claims they have all key permits required to proceed.
But in Michigan, mining permits are “Issued, but not Effective” until
financial assurances and bonding have been secured.

With this Michi%an EGLE "incremental permitting,” this means the
forest that Highland Cooper is destroying and the creeks they plan to
permanently re-align as part of their wetlands permit may be
sacrificed for nothing if Highland Copper fails to meet the remaining
requirements.

Highland Cooper is actively racing to clear cut hundreds of acres and
destroy wetlands before their permits expire. As of this past week,
there were local logging trucks seen hauling chopped trees out of their
construction area for the mine.

— —

Actual Photos taken at the Copperwood Proposed Mine Site Last Summer
WHO IS HIGHLAND COPPER?

Highland Copper is in their own words a "junior mining company".
The Copperwood mine would be this company's first mine. While
they may be a new company, they already have a record of
working illegally without permits and damaging the ecosystem
as shown in a report by Steve Casey, U.P. district coordinator for
the DEQ's Water Resources Division in Marquette "the mining
company continued test drilling operations during spring
snowmelt, in and around wetlands, without first obtaining the
necessary wetlands or soil erosion and sediment contro
permits. The resulting work damaged wetlands and resulted in a
discharge of muddied water from the site."

THERE ARE NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET

The company estimates they will provide 300 construction jobs
to build the mine, and 380 jobs for the 10 years it operates. The
mine will negatively impact the local tourism economy, forcing
the closure of a nearby campground. This project also poses an
existential threat to the fisheries of Lake Superior- and the
businesses and communities that rely on being able to eat the
fish. You may hear that this project will bolster the local
economy, but past mines of this type tell a different story.
Harvard Economics Professor James Stock, advisor to President
Obama is quoted saying: "In 89% of cases copper mining ends
up being a negative for jobs and a negative for incomes."3 We
are trading 10 years of jobs for 300 people in exchange for
ecological devastation for future generations.
A GOOD USE FOR $50 MILLION FROM THE
STATE OF MICHIGAN?

You may hear that copper is needed for electrical vehicles to
combat climate change and it is critical that we mine it for "the
green revolution’- But copper is not scarce. It is 100% recyclable,
and an estimated 88% of copper still remains in the ground. In
fact, the United States exports nearly ten times as much copper
as it importsl and is the #1 exporter of scrap copper in the world.
And so its understandable why, despite extreme pressure from
the industry, copper was just recently denied an upgrade of
status to "critical mineral"2 by the U.S. Geological Society.

On March 26th of 2024, the Michigan Economic Development
Corporation (MEDC) accounced that they would award a
$50,000,000 construction subsidy to Highland Copper for the
Copperwood project. This is abnormal for the MEDC, an
organization that was set up to fund clean-up projects on past
industrial sites to prepare them for development, not support the
incursion of extractive industry onto pristine natural lands.
Furthermore, the economic analysis released by MEDC does not
address mining's negative impacts to tourism or natural resources
that are likely to be felt for many generations after the copper is
long gone; the current expected lifespan of the Copperwood Mine
is just 11 years.

In May of 2024, Minnesota signed into law a bill that will establish
a Critical Materials Recovery Advisory Task Force in the state to
help bring recycling infrastructure and jobs to Minnesota, where
hundreds of thousands of tons of "critial minerals" are thrown
away every year. Why risk poisoning the worlds largest body of
fresh water to pull copper out of the earth, when we can build
systems to recycle it out of the waste stream, creating jobs that
are more sustainable that mining ever could be? How far could
$50 million dollars go towards establishing a circular economy of
copper in Michigan? Or towards protecting and stewarding
wetlands- the same ones that Highland Copper is destroying-
which serve as our regions best natural carbon-sinks?
WE ARE JUST MESSENGERS! NOW
THAT YOU'VE GOT THE MESSAGE,
WHAT WILL YOU DO?

Highland Copper is an inexperienced foreign company who will
extract Michigan's copper, ship it out of country, board up shop in
10.7 years, and leave a 30+ million ton pile of toxic waste behind,
forever, at the juncture of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness and the
North Country Trail, on topography sloping towards Lake Superior.
Not many people know about this mine and having conversations
and building awareness within our communities is crucial for these
local struggles to gain support.

If you're interested in fighting against this disastrous project you can
reach out to local groups who are taking on this fight against the
mine or just get a group of friends together and go scouting, door to
dooring and enage in protests and direct actions. Organize your own
events or demonstrations to further teach about the harms of this
mine and other local issues like the Line 5 pipeline.

The $50 million handout of Michigan taxpayer revenue to Highland
Copper should never have been approved. The grant has been
approved by the Michigan Strategic Fund, but it now must pass the
additional steps of being approved by both the Michigan House and
Senate Appropriations Committees. THE NEXT MEETING IS ON
THURSDAY, JUNE 6TH. Contact them TODAY and urge a rejection of
this gross misuse of taxpayer dollars!

For a full list of all the members of both committees, go to
protecttheporkies.com/take-action

LOCAL GROUPS:

Protect the Porkies: Protecttheporkies.com
Mining Action: Savethewildup.org

Gichigami Guardians: gichigami_guardians (Instagram)
SOURCES

1. https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-copper/
reporter/usa

2. www.eenews.net/articles/usgs-rejects-push-to-make-copper-a-
critical-mineral/

3. https://www .karell.com/article/news/politics/economist-sees-
net-job-loss-from-bwca-mine/89-b93d2be4-7d42-4afa-
aBac-378161088ef8
TURNING THIS...